A Preliminary Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center

The Charles Tomlinson Papers contain
materials related to his career as a poet and translator, including notebooks,
handwritten and typescript drafts, and proofs of many of his works. Also present
is
extensive correspondence from colleagues and friends.

Language:

English, French, Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese

Access:

Open for research, except for correspondence from Michael Alexander, John Berger,
Michael Edwards, and Geoffrey Hill, to remain restricted until writer’s decease.

The Charles Tomlinson Papers contain materials related to his career as a poet and
translator, including notebooks, handwritten and typescript drafts, and proofs
of
many of his works. Also present is extensive correspondence from colleagues and
friends. The collection is divided into three series: Series I. Works; Series
II.
Correspondence; and Series III. Other Papers. Some of the materials in the
collection are in French, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese.

The works in Series I. are arranged alphabetically by title, and include published
and unpublished individual poems, articles, lectures, and books. There are several
interviews with and by Tomlinson about poetry, as well as introductions for several
collections edited by Tomlinson. Some titles are more heavily represented than
others, and frequently there is a mix of handwritten and typescript drafts, as
well
as proofs and tear sheets. Titles include Airborn / Hijos del
Aire, a book of collaborative poems written by Tomlinson and Octavio
Paz; American Scenes, and Other Poems; The Necklace, one of Tomlinson's earliest published
efforts; A Peopled Landscape; Poetry and
Metamorphosis, a collection of lectures Tomlinson delivered at Cambridge
University; and Renga: A Chain of Poems, a
collaboration between Tomlinson, Paz, Jacques Roubaud, and Edoardo Sanguineti.
There
are several boxes of poetry notebooks that contain early ideas and drafts for
poems,
from the early 1950s through 1990. Also present are five folders labeled Juvenilia
that contain early projects, as well as some student essays from Tomlinson's time
at
Queens' College, Cambridge.

Series II. Correspondence is divided into Subseries A. Outgoing; and Subseries B.
Incoming. The Outgoing correspondence is comprised of letters to the poet and
educator Donald Davie, Tomlinson's tutor at Queens' College and later a close
personal friend, and to Oscar Mellors at Fantasy Press, who published the first
edition of The Necklace.